"Brad Thor - Harvath 01 -The Lions Of Lucerne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thor Brad)

each question. Miner also had the indecency to try to seduce her. He found Claudia
attractive, and, in all fairness, she had attempted to use her wiles to goad a little more
information out of him. Instead of coughing up some information, though, he had
come on to her even more strongly. Claudia felt she should have known better.
Though everything about him indicated he had a passion for women, passion did not
necessarily equal weakness, and gambling that it might had been ClaudiaтАЩs mistake.
The end of their lunch was no less frustrating than its beginning. Without even
consulting her, Miner ordered dessert for the two of them. This was a liberty that
sent ClaudiaтАЩs already boiling blood over onto the stove. Number one, he ordered
liquor, which Claudia didnтАЩt touch while working, and number two, he went on to
lecture Claudia on her poor taste for turning down a fabulous dessert wine that the
hotel Food & Beverage manager kept specially in the cellar for him. No doubt,
Claudia thought to herself, Miner had something good on the F&B manager to
rate such treatment. She made a mental note to check the manager out when she got
back to Bern.
It wasnтАЩt enough that he let her know the wine was a special delicacy the hotel
reserved solely for him. No, Miner had to go on and make sure that uneducated little
Claudia knew exactly what she was missing. In a tone that was entirely haughty, and
which entirely suited Gerhard Miner, he launched into what sounded like a rote
recitation of a wine clubтАЩs tasting notes.
Vin de Constance was a dessert wine from the Constantia estate in South Africa. It
was a favorite of Napol├йon Bonaparte, who had thirty bottles a month shipped to
Elba to ease the misery of his banishment. The king of Prussia as well as Louis XVI
loved Vin de Constance. Dickens celebrated it in Edwin Drood, and Baudelaire said,
тАЬonly the lips of a lover surpassed it in heavenly sweetness.тАЭ Only twelve thousand
bottles were produced annually, with almost all of them accounted for before they hit
the market. An American colleague who had introduced Miner to the stuff helped
arrange for a case to be sent to Switzerland. No small feat, as Vin de Constance was
one of the most coveted wines in the world.
Throughout this ridiculous speech, Claudia developed a pretty good plan for where
Miner could put his wine if the hotelтАЩs cellar ever got overcrowded. Though she had
already politely declined MinerтАЩs offer, he poured the expensive liquid into her glass
anyway. A faint sneer developed at the corner of MinerтАЩs mouth when Claudia
grabbed the neck of the bottle and repeated, тАЬI said, no thank you.тАЭ The sneer,
which Miner quickly masked with a false smile, proved to Claudia that the man was
not completely impenetrable. She counted this as one small victory in the series of
sharp defeats that had been their lunch.
Claudia had so strongly insisted on questioning Miner because he was her last
possible lead. She had exhausted everything else. Claudia had gone back and
questioned the military base staff again and again. She had monitored their bank
accounts and purchasing patterns, hoping that if there was someone involved on the
inside, he or she would slip up and make a large deposit or a large purchase that
couldnтАЩt be explained away. To date, nothing had come to light. Nothing had turned
up in Switzerland, and nothing had turned up on the black markets abroad.
The Vin de Constance lecture notwithstanding, Claudia felt as if she didnтАЩt know any
more today than she had yesterday and that her whole trip to Lucerne had been a
waste of time. As far as the missing weapons were concerned, Miner did have better
means than anyone else in all of Switzerland to steal them. Claudia was dead-on. But
just because Miner had once been involved in government-sanctioned exercises
testing the security of Swiss military establishments didnтАЩt mean that he had anything